In the Process of Yoga

The process of yoga feeds the yoga teaching experience of asana. At first it seems that a student comes to class to follow and listen to your instruction. The more advanced student is observing and participating on a deeper level: yearning for authenticity, an example of living yoga, an acceptance of human imperfection. As a yoga instructor, the “I’m not perfect and life is hard” awareness allows ample room for humor and a platform for growth.

Yoga gives the practitioner a set of practices that allow an inner seeing to occur. From this vantage point, we embrace it all and use the higher Self to respond with compassion using an aching shoulder or a situation/relationship to surrender to something higher. Sounds easy, but it’s the establishment of core, and the continual practice of core awareness which allows for a healthy, responsible response to life.

To know what makes the core strong physically and emotionally, we often have to look at what makes the core not so strong. What framework of energy do we carry around unconsciously—what thoughts keep circulating, what pattern of thoughts can’t we let go of? The process is awareness, surrendering, opening to something higher, and most importantly, restructuring—it’s like a mini cycle of life.

Relief comes in knowing that no person is perfect. What’s perfect is Awareness. It exposes our tendencies which often seem not so perfect. Having a set of yoga practices informs us as to how to respond or act with skill in the outside world. It’s like shining a flashlight into our body—the nooks and cranny’s, crevices and peaks. The cool thing is you don’t get to a certain level and stop. Life keeps giving you more and more situations to refine your practice, your yoga, your life.

So I’ve practiced yoga for a while now and last March, I pulled an inner hamstring doing yoga. I went home and iced and elevated my leg. The soreness wouldn’t go away so I quit teaching and practicing asana for a couple months. The injury shifted over the next couple of months: around the sitbone, and outer hip and eventually to my psoas. The psoas originates along the lumbar spine runs through the pelvic girdle and attaches to the inner femur bone. The origin of this muscle is dead center of my core. Things changed in that area and felt strange and abnormally tight and lumpy, enough so, that I spent the next couple of months getting tests which in the end were clear. The process itself was an entry point to help me use awareness to uncover my relationship with what “core” means.